The Boilerman's Apprentice
by nemesisqueer
Summary: Once upon a time, in a village half a world away, a boy named Yuki Haku set out on the first of many grand adventures. (Spirited Away AU, kind of? Updates monthly-ish.)
1. The Last Good Day

_When you meet someone, you never_ _really_ _forget them.  
It __just_ _takes a while for your memory to return._

—

The nurse's office was too bright, and Haku wasn't sure how he'd gotten there this time. His memory felt jumbled up and distant, like a fading dream.

He remembered screaming, or at least he thought he did, because his dry throat tasted coppery and raw. He remembered, too, his teacher telling him and the rest of his third grade class about a flock of migratory birds landing in the nearby treeline. The shadowy afterimage of a thousand flapping wings still danced at the corners of his vision, pulsing faintly in time with the beating of his heart.

If he never saw another starling again, he thought, it would be too soon.

Haku tucked his bony knees under his chin and rubbed the worry-smooth face of a five-yen coin. It was a good luck charm, a gift from Uncle Kosuke, so that the pair of them would never have to be apart.

Almost six months ago, he'd sat in the same too-large chair while Nurse Wallace tried and failed to sugarcoat the news that they'd found Kosuke's body on the banks of the Delaware. He'd worn the coin on a chain around his neck every day since then.

Nurse Wallace looked up from her outdated laptop and flashed him the same condescending smile adults always did.

"There you are," she said, in a voice as bright as the humming fluorescents overhead. "How do you feel?"

Blood pounded in his ears and his heart felt like it might beat out of his chest. "I don't know," he said. "Crappy, I guess. Did I hit my head on something?"

"Nothing as traumatic as all that," she chuckled, though what she found so funny, Haku couldn't guess. "You just had a little scare on the playground, I think." She typed something on her ancient keyboard. He tried to crane his neck to see, but she turned her screen away from him.

"Can you remember what spooked you?"

He didn't remember feeling _frightened_ , exactly—just screaming and the screen-door smell of distant lightning. "Um…"

"It's okay if you can't," said the nurse. "We all get a little scared from time to time _._ "

Haku knew better than to argue with adults who had already made up their mind. "I'm tired," he muttered to no one in particular.

"I'm sure you are. Your mother is already on her way, so you just sit tight, okay?"

He nodded once, slowly, and pretended to understand. Mother had _opinions_ about picking him up early from school, and if she was missing work to come and get him, then whatever happened on the playground must have been more serious than the nurse was letting on.

She sent him to the waiting room, to sit under a big vent that rumbled when the heat kicked on and filled the room with the smell of burning dust.

Mother arrived a few minutes later. She smiled at him from the other side of the glass door and waved. He waved back, but he was too tired to smile.

"Hey, sweetheart." Mother crouched down to brush a few strands of dark hair out of his eyes. He knew he should have been glad to see her, that he should have been glad to go home, but the quiet concern just made his cheeks burn with embarrassment. News traveled fast in the third grade, so by now the whole school already knew he was the freak who screamed at birds. "What happened today?"

He buried his face in the crook of his elbow and thought he might die from sheer embarrassment. "I don't know," he mumbled. "I got sick, I guess."

The nurse's too-bright voice floated over the high office counter. "We just got a little scared on the playground, is all," she said, stepping around the desk with the same measured, condescending smile. "But we're alright now, aren't we, Haku?"

"Yeah, I guess so," he said, although he did not _feel_ alright.

Nurse Wallace seemed satisfied. She beckoned his mother over to her side of the high office counter, to talk in that quiet, secretive way adults did. "Mrs. Yuki," she asked, peering over Mother's shoulder to make sure he wasn't paying attention. "Has your son ever had a panic attack before?"

Haku picked at a fraying thread on his backpack and pretended he wasn't listening.

"A panic attack?"

"They're not uncommon after—" Nurse Wallace paused, dropping her voice low. "—after major life changes, even in children. It may never happen again, but if you're worried, I can recommend a grief counselor in Pittsburgh who specializes in families. Given your recent history, it might be something to consider anyway."

The way Mother's shoulders tensed told Haku everything he needed to know about the images 'recent history' conjured in her memory. He hadn't been allowed to go with her to identify the body, and Uncle Kosuke had been given a closed-casket funeral, but in the age of the Internet it was hard to keep anything from a curious child. He knew what drowning did to a body, and imagination provided the rest of the image.

"Even you and your husband might benefit," the nurse pressed on. "I've never met anyone who couldn't do with a little therapy after losing a family memb—"

"I'll keep that in mind for the future," Mother interrupted, in a tone that very much implied she would not. "For now, I'd like to take my son home. He's had a long enough morning as it is."

"Oh." Nurse Wallace deflated. "Right, of course. He'll need a doctor's note if you decide to keep him home tomorrow too."

Mother nodded.

She signed him out without saying anything else of substance to anyone. A kind word here, a polite explanation there. It was a performance Haku had grown accustomed to since April. His mother always danced away from the topic of Kosuke.

If the line of white-haired old ladies behind the desk noticed the nervous edge to her laughter, or the uncomfortable way she fidgeted with her bargain bin bracelet, they were kind enough not to mention it.

He waited until they were in the car to ask the question burning on the forefront of his mind.

"She was talking about Kosuke, wasn't she?"

His mother's already white knuckles tightened around the steering wheel and her eyes flicked up to meet his gaze, briefly, in the rearview window. For a long time, she said nothing. "It's rude to eavesdrop, Haku."

"But she was. When she said 'family history,'" he prompted. "She meant Kosuke, right?"

"You'll never hear anything but bad news that way," she continued. "Anyway, that nurse didn't know _what_ she was talking about. _Common even in children._ As if I don't know what a panic attack is."

"Do you think that's what I had? A panic attack?" he asked. Mother had worked as an assistant in a psychiatric facility for as long as Haku could remember; she knew about these things.

"I don't know. Probably not. It's just stress. It's been a long year. The move, your dad's new job—"

"And Kosuke," he added, but his mother either didn't hear him or pretended she hadn't.

They didn't talk about Kosuke anymore. Not about his life, or about his death, or about what they were going to do with his remaining possessions, piled high in dusty boxes in their crowded front hall closet. Mother had taken down their photos of him well before the move, and she had conveniently forgotten to unpack them afterwards. If she had her way, he thought, none of them would remember that his uncle had even existed. It seemed so unfair, so disrespectful; his uncle had truly become a ghost, ever present but unacknowledged on the edges of their collective memory.

Father said that ignoring her grief, putting space between herself and it, was Mother's way of coping with what had happened. Haku had tried not to hate her for it, with moderate success.

"We needed the change," she continued to fill the silence, "but it would wear anyone out. Stress made you sick all the time when you were a baby."

"Yeah," he said, "when I was a _baby._ "

He plucked idly at a loose string on the arm of his booster seat and watched the rows of utility poles as they passed. "Maybe I should go talk to that guy," he said as they pulled up to a red light. "In Pittsburgh, the grief counselor guy. Nobody else is talking about Kosuke, and I've been having nightmares again—"

"And no wonder!" Her eyes darted back up to meet his again. "What do you expect, dwelling on what happened to your uncle like that? It's morbid."

"Somebody has to." He crossed his arms over his chest and stared back at her, daring her to look away first. "You and Dad just want to forget about him."

The light turned green. Mother looked away. "That's enough," she said.

"Well, you do—"

"I said _enough_."

Their tiny apartment was still only half unpacked. Haku pushed past the maze of cardboard boxes in the entry, slipped off his canvas shoes, and made a beeline for his bedroom. "Have you eaten?" his mother called after him. "I can make you somethi—"

"I'm just gonna lay down," he called back without stopping. "I still don't feel so good."

Back in the safety of his room, he finally felt like he could breathe. The panic had ridden home in his lungs, tight and close and fueled by embarrassment and confusion. He felt lighter without it, clearer. When he closed his eyes, instead of the afterimage of a thousand wings beating in the distant treeline, he saw nothing.

Without the sense of impending doom, Haku felt very small and very alone.

Next to his bedroom window, on a shelf where the sunlight could reach it, he had built a small shrine. Kosuke had given him the idea a few years earlier, after Grandmother's funeral, although his had been better. He'd had a picture of Grandmother, for one thing.

Instead of a picture, Haku had to make do with a folded-up copy of his uncle's obituary he'd printed out at school. He kept it hidden in the jacket of an old picture book; if Mother found it, he suspected she would just throw it away.

Haku didn't know if he believed that spirits lived on after a person died. He didn't know how they _could_. Things had rules, and those rules were based on things that you could see and touch and smell and hear, and the rules said that when you died, that was the end.

Still, Kosuke had believed that he could still talk to Grandmother after her accident, and sometimes when Haku stood in front of his little makeshift shrine, head bowed and breath shaky, he, too, felt a little less alone.

He unfolded the paper and set it in pride of place, wedged between a pack of magician's playing cards and a worn leather billfold. A wooden figurine of a rabbit propped the paper up from behind. The rabbit, now chipped almost completely clean of its white paint, had once belonged to his grandmother.

"I had the dream again," he said. "Just like before. Mom says it's probably nothing, but it always feels so real.

"She says I shouldn't think about you so much," he said. "She says it's 'morbid,' and that's why I'm having bad dreams, but she's the one hiding all your pictures."

He stopped and sighed, and reminded himself that his was just how Mother dealt with these things.

"She misses you," he said. "A lot. We all do."

He waited for a while, hoping something would happen but knowing it would not. The mismatched collection of objects—the playing cards, the figurine, a smooth but otherwise unremarkable stone they'd found combing the banks of Lake Chicago one summer—felt as empty as ever.

Haku tucked the fading obituary back into the dust jacket and replaced it with his coin necklace, resting the clasp behind the rabbit's exposed wooden ears.

It was an hour past his bedtime when Mother plucked the library book from his hands and sat down at the end of his bed. She was still wearing her shoes, and the tense line of her mouth suggested she wouldn't be sleeping anytime soon.

"So," she began. "Nightmares, huh?"

Haku didn't look up at her, just wrung the worn edge of Grandmother's quilt in his hands. "Yeah."

"Want to talk about them? They're about Kosuke, right?"

"Not _really_ ," he admitted. "I mean, he's not in them, exactly, but—"

His mother had never taken an interest in the contents of his nightmares before now. Talking about them—like dwelling on his uncle, like talking about Grandmother, like anything else that made Mother uncomfortable—was bad luck. It angered the spirits or brought some bad omen to fruition. It simply wasn't done.

But she leaned in close and ruffled his hair, smiling, with none of the frustration she'd shown on the ride home. "If you don't want to talk about them…." Her voice trailed off, but she didn't seem upset.

"No, it's okay," he said. "But…they aren't _nice_ dreams. You'll think I'm being morbid."

She sighed. "I shouldn't have said that earlier. I'm sorry. It's just—"

"Been a long year," he said.

Mother smiled weakly and gathered him up in her lap. "I know it hasn't been easy on you either," she said, resting her chin on the top of his head. "And I haven't really been there when you needed me, either."

They sat like that in silence for a few minutes, Mother swaying gently with her arms around him. She hummed a quiet song he remembered Grandmother singing when he was very, very small. Haku hadn't realized how much he'd needed the contact comfort until now.

"It's always the same dream," he said finally. "I'm somewhere dark—a cave, I think—and I can hear it storming outside. There's water all around me. It's cold, so cold that it burns, and it's heavy, and it just keeps rising and I can't find my way out—" His lungs burned at the memory and he sucked in a steadying breath. "I'm looking for something in the cave, but the water makes it hard to move. Then I wake up, right before I—" He stopped.

"Right before you…?"

"Drown."

She flinched at his bluntness. For a moment, Haku thought she was going to scold him again, that she somehow knew about the times he'd held his breath for as long as he could or searched on the school computer to find out what drowning felt like. Maybe Mother was right and he only had bad dreams because he was a wicked, morbid little boy.

But she didn't scold him, just held him tighter, and for a long time she didn't say anything at all.

"Mom, is something bad going to happen?"

"What?" When she pulled away, her eyes were rimmed red. "Of course not, baby. Why would you think that?"

"Kosuke said we were cursed."

"Did he." A note of fond irritation crept into her voice. She tried and failed to hide the beginnings of a smile. "What fairy stories was my brother telling you, anyway?"

"He told me that there was an angry spirit who picked off members of our clan one by one because one of our ancestors stole something from him. He said that's what got Grandmother." Haku twisted the hem of his pajama shirt in his hands and didn't look at her. "Is the curse going to get me, too?"

His mother smiled and shook her head. "Dad and I would never let anything bad happen to you, sweetheart."

"What if it gets you first, though? It already got Kosuke…"

She sighed. "Kosuke was very sick."

"But what if the curse is _why_ he got sick? What if—"

"That's enough of that," Mother said softly, leaning down to kiss his sleek hair. She climbed out of bed and settled him in against his fortress of hand-me-down pillows. "You'll give yourself more nightmares."

Haku thought about Kosuke, even though he wasn't supposed to. He thought about Grandmother, too, and about the angry spirit that was probably hiding under his bed, waiting for the right moment to drag him off as punishment for his ancestor's crimes. "I'm already going to have nightmares," he mumbled.

Her face dropped into a serious expression he couldn't read. She fumbled with the pocket of her worn out jeans, twisting the top of it between her thumb and index finger, and said nothing.

Then, all at once, her smile returned. "Lucky for you, your mom still has a few tricks up her sleeve," she said. "Hold out your hand."

He did so dutifully, closing his eyes out of habit.

A folded slip of stationery fluttered into his open palm. Haku opened one eye, then the other, his excitement dissipating. "It's just paper," he announced flatly.

"I wrote something very special for you inside, to chase away the nightmares," Mother said, folding his small hands around it. "It's just for you, so you have to wait until I leave to open it. Your dad will be in to say goodnight in just a little while, but you can't show him either. It'll be our little secret, okay?"

Didn't Mother already know what was written inside? He wondered what could be so secret that even she couldn't see it a second time. Then he thought about curses and spirits again, and about the way Mother and Father had argued over dinner, and came to the next logical conclusion:

"It's magic, isn't it?" he whispered.

She glanced over her shoulder. The sound of Father clearing away the dinner dishes floated down the hall. "Yes. But it won't work if you open it before I leave, so you have to wait."

He nodded, though he didn't really get it. If Mother said he had to wait, he could wait, however much the thought of opening the little pink paper and discovering the magic within excited him. She kissed his forehead again, more urgently this time, and held him tightly in her arms.

"I love you, baby," she said, in the same grave tone she used whenever they talked about Kosuke. "You know that Dad and I would never let anything happen to you, right?"

"You already said," he grumbled, but regretted it when he saw the way her face fell.

"Oh," she said. "I guess I did."

She crossed the room, stopping in the door to turn off the overhead light. He noticed the way her shoulders shook when she walked, and suddenly Haku was very aware that his mother was crying—or at least trying not to.

"Hey, Mom?"

"Yes, baby?" Her breath hitched when she spoke.

"I love you."

Mother made a strangled noise in the back of her throat. "I love you too, baby. Your dad and I love you so, so much." She took a shuddering breath. "Dream some good dreams for me tonight, okay?"

And then he was alone again, the sound of Mother's footsteps fading down the hall before that light, too, winked out.

Haku scrambled out of bed, the stationery still balled tightly in his fist. He didn't stop to turn on his bedside lamp; there was already enough light leaking through the window to read by. He'd hated sleeping under the street light at first, but now the soft orange glow that spilled in through his blinds kept the monsters away better than any nightlight.

He stopped at his bookshelf and pulled the coin necklace back over his head. Mother said he couldn't show anyone, but surely Kosuke didn't count.

The paper was nearly crushed and sticky with sweat, but he managed to peel it open without tearing it. In the dim lamp light, Mother's hasty scrawl was nearly incomprehensible.

Totally incomprehensible, actually; after several seconds of squinting, Haku realized the small, sharp characters were written in a language he recognized, but couldn't read. He had seen them before, on the many curiosities Grandmother had brought with her from Japan. The same script marked both hers and Kosuke's graves.

He waited.

Nothing happened.

The paper sat in his open palms and did exactly nothing. It smelled faintly of the sandalwood incense Mother burned each year on Grandmother's birthday, but it was otherwise unremarkable. He had been expecting magic, or at the very least some kind of secret message. Haku wondered if he'd messed it up somehow.

A knock on the front door distracted him from his disappointment momentarily. It was late, much later than his parents ever had company. He padded over to the cracked door to hear their unexpected visitor, but he didn't make it that far.

All at once, the crumpled paper in his hand grew white-hot. Haku yelped and tried to drop it, but the strange characters hung in the air where the sheet had been. The floor of his bedroom fell away instead.

As the walls stretched down towards inescapable blackness, he found himself too shocked to panic. He imagined falling into a black hole would probably feel a lot like this—like being sucked through an infinitely long and infinitely tiny straw forever, your body twisting and contorting to accommodate a new and unnatural shape.

Rushing air like a hundred hands, formless and invisible, beat against his skin and pulled his clothes, his hair, in a hundred different directions. He squeezed his eyes shut to keep them from popping out of his skull.

Haku cried out for Mother, for Father, for _anyone_ , but the sound never reached his ears. There was only a dull roar, growing louder with each passing second until his eardrums threatened to burst.

And then, as quickly as it began, it stopped. Warm sunlight filtered red through his eyelids, and he felt cool, rough stone under his bare feet. Somewhere in the distance, familiar songbirds sang soft, familiar songs.

With no idea where he was or how he'd gotten there, Haku steeled himself, filled his lungs with cold October air, and opened one eye.

—

 **Author's Note:**

So this took me a year to write in full because I went back and revised it 800 times. I'm going to try to shoot for monthly updates, but you've been warned. Welcome aboard and have fun~!


	2. The Prince in White

" _Long, long ago, a boy not much older than you set out on the first of many great adventures. His name was Yuki Haku, and he was the cleverest and the fairest of all his mother's sons. By the time he was your age, Haku could already call down the snow from a reluctant spring sky, or freeze a well solid with little more effort than a child's tantrum._

" _In those days, our family lived along the banks of a great river in a valley where peach trees grew. Though the rest of Old Japan was wracked with turmoil and civil war, the Yuki clan thrived under the protection of the river's living spirit, and if you believe the stories, each of them was blessed with powerful magic._

" _Each year, Haku's talents and his ambition grew, until no one in the village could keep up with his progress. It was decided that he would fare better under the tutelage of a wiser teacher, and who better to teach him than the very source of the Yuki clan's magic?_

" _So it came to pass that, on the morning of his twelfth birthday, Haku kissed his mother goodbye and set out alone in search of the river spirit."_

—

The rough stone path under his feet was jagged and cool, and about as wide as the road in front of his family's apartment complex. Where the sunlight spilled in through the canopy overhead, the stones were a blinding white.

Haku stood almost directly beneath a square wooden structure. He had seen one of these before in a book about Japan that Grandmother had given him, but that one had been much better shape. This structure was just a few straight, simple beams, tangled with weeds and exploring vines, and its bright red paint was peeling from weather or age or both.

Ahead of him, through the gateway, he thought he could see tile roofs in the distance. Behind him, the forest stretched on into deep, hungry darkness.

The fact that he had no idea where he was dawned on him comparatively late. He could not explain how he'd gotten there, though, and so he did not try. Instead, Haku thought about his mother, repeated his home address and phone number in his head—twice, just to be sure he'd gotten them right—and stepped forward onto the road. _He_ didn't know where he was, but someone else must, and that someone could probably help him find his way home.

Maybe he was dreaming, he thought as he walked, passing brightly colored but alien flowers and tall dandelions with blooms the size of his head. But the rough stone bit at the bottoms of his uncalloused feet and threatened to burn him where the canopy gave way to open sky. People in dreams couldn't feel pain. That was common sense.

Haku pinched himself just to be sure. He felt that too, and scampered over to the side of the road shaded by a row of abandoned buildings.

Each house had its own dilapidated version of the towering red gate poised gracefully above its gate. No life stirred in the darkness beyond the settling glass. The buildings grew closer together as he walked, and better cared for, though each one seemed just as empty as the last. How long had it been since anyone had lived here?

If anyone had ever lived there at all, he thought. The whole place had the eerie feel of a place not for living, like the empty hallways of his school at night.

Further in, the road began to branch out into narrow side streets. He ducked into one of these, followed its winding path until it reached a dead end, then retraced his steps and tried another.

Every alley yielded the same result. No signs of life, nothing that looked like more than a pale imitation of the real world. The whole place reminded him of an abandoned movie set.

He wasn't supposed to be here.

To make matters worse, he had no way of knowing how long he'd been walking, how long he'd been gone. As the sun climbed towards noon over the glittering tile rooftops, he considered once again that he might be dreaming. Mother had tucked him in only a few short hours ago.

But Haku's stamina was beginning to flag. The cold breeze bit at the tops of his bare feet, and his nose was beginning to run. He prided himself on being a sensible boy— _clever_ , even, like the brave and beautiful hero from Kosuke's bedtime stories. It was safer to assume this was all real than to find out too late that it was, and this realization brought with it the first creeping edges of the panic he'd been avoiding.

He was lost, stuck, and he had no idea which direction home even was, let alone how to get there. Mother and Father would look for them, once they noticed he was gone, but how would they know where to look? He had seen enough grocery store tabloid headlines to know that lost children didn't always come home.

And then there was the matter of Mother's note. The thought—of curses and spells and angry spirits, of the possibility that Mother _might_ know where to find him—was not a comforting one. He buried his hands in the pockets of his fleece pajama pants and shivered and told himself it was just the cold.

When the fifth alley he explored turned up just as empty, Haku decided that exploring them was a waste of time. Instead, he kept to the main road, which rose ominously towards what he guessed must be the center of town. Or maybe the end of the whole world; he could see no roofs or treetops above it, and fear was beginning to get the better of him.

The world didn't end at the top of the hill, though he couldn't decide if he was grateful for that or not. What he saw instead was a sprawling network of empty side streets stretching down to a body of water too small to be called a lake. On the water sat the strangest building Haku had ever seen.

It dwarfed the surrounding buildings, with enclosed gardens and ornate balconies jutting out from the upper floors, and all shaded under a tile roof that glittered iridescent green and purple. Huge clouds of steam billowed up from a round, narrow chimney as tall as the building itself.

The whole thing seemed to float on the surface of the water with no ground below to anchor it. Haku thought that must have been a trick of the light.

The sound of distant music floated up from the town below, along with the smell of woodsmoke and cooking meat. That meant people. He thought about his parents, repeated his home address and phone number one more time, and started down the hill.

Gravity and the steep slope did most of the work in carrying him to the bottom, though the cracked rock still bit angrily at the bottoms of his feet as he ran. He tried to ignore the way they stung with every step, the fact that they were probably bleeding. He could worry about his feet when he got home; right now, he was more worried about finding someone who could get him there.

Mother had taught him what to do in an emergency. Stay calm, find an adult—a police officer was best, or a mother with her children. Someone who looked trustworthy. Someone who looked like they could help, like they _would_ help.

The smell of food and the sounds of voices were much closer at the bottom, but the streets still seemed vacant. On this side of the hill, the main road was lined with shops and restaurants—all empty, but he could see plates piled high with strange, delicious-smelling food. Haku's stomach growled; he had excused himself halfway through his rapidly cooling spaghetti at dinner when Mother and Father had started to argue, and hadn't eaten since then.

Voices meant people, he reminded himself, and people meant home. He had no money, but there was food at home. Reluctant to leave the open air of the main road, Haku picked a side street that looked promising and started down it. Maybe the sixth time was the charm.

Though the street was wider and better lit than the alleys above, it was soon apparent that it was just as empty. There was no motion, no life, inside the buildings or out. His enthusiasm began to fade; he was still lost, perhaps hopelessly so, and now it seemed like the ghost town was simply playing tricks on him.

He almost gave up then, almost marched back to the main road to pick another street and search until he found _something_. What possessed him to round the last corner, he wasn't sure—desperation, or perhaps the quiet whispered voices of the three women huddled together under a balcony at the end of the street.

They spoke in slow, grating whispers that sounded like gibberish until he got close enough. Haku understood more Japanese than he spoke, but their elongated vowels and stretched words sounded like nothing he'd ever heard in his short, formal education.

Still, they were the first people he'd seen, which made them his best chance at getting home. He waited and hoped they would notice him without him interjecting, but they did not.

"Excuse me," he said. The foreign syllables felt stiff and unfamiliar in his mouth, and suddenly he wished he'd paid more attention to Mother's lessons. "I'm lost. Can any of you help me find my mother?"

The trio fell silent. None of them turned to face him.

"Did you hear that?" asked one in a hollow voice.

"The little prince is lost," said the next.

"He wants us to help him find his mother," said the third.

Haku took a step back. Now that they were not whispering amongst themselves, their voices sounded wrong—gravelly and echoing, like a whisper too close to his ear.

"He must be frightened," they chimed in unison. Their laughter was high and ill-matched for the deepness of their voices. The sound froze him, fixed him to the spot.

The women raised from their huddle to their full height, towering above him, and turned to look at him one by one. Now he could see their faces, or where faces should have been; their pale, greyish skin covered their heads like smooth masks, with only gently curling slits where their eyes should have been. Through these, there was only darkness.

On one of their "faces," there seemed to be a great deal of blood.

His legs trembled as they glided towards him. He should have run. He should have turned around and come back the way he came. But turning around meant turning his back on them, and he couldn't bring himself to move. Instead, he took a few, shaky, hesitant steps backwards, until he felt painted brick behind him and knew that he could go no further.

Haku knew his home address and his phone number, but his mother had never prepared him to deal with _monsters_. He tried to will himself awake, but when he opened his eyes, one of the faceless women merely cocked her head at him. In the shadows, she looked thoughtful, almost curious.

"Let's eat his heart," said one, although he could not tell which.

"Our host will be displeased," said another.

"He's not a guest," said the one in the center, leaning in close to inspect him. There really was nothing where her eyes should have been, nothing but empty darkness. "Our host will never know."

A gust of frigid air pushed him back against the brick as the other two monsters converged on him. Haku screamed and covered his eyes with his hands and thought, not for the first time that day, that he was going to die.

The fact that he did not came as something of a welcome surprise.

He waited several seconds, just to be sure, then peered between his fingers at the three towering creatures standing over him. They did not move, but stood gleaming, surrounded bright sunlight. It was as if time, for them, had stopped. They didn't turn to watch him as he slipped out from under their gaze, but he thought he saw the shadows stir behind their eyes.

It wasn't until he'd stepped around them that he realized they'd been completely encased in ice.

"You'd better come away from there, or they really will eat you," said a voice from behind him.

Haku jumped and spun on his heels, but relaxed when he saw that the owner of the voice was normal-sized and had the correct number of facial features. The newcomer was older than Haku by at least ten years—around Kosuke's age, give or take a little.

His voice was gentle and soft, and, most importantly, _human._

And he was beautiful; his skin was fair, his features pointed and delicate, and his long black hair swept the ground. He wore plain white robes that reflected the blinding sun, tied at the middle with a thin red cord. He gave Haku a warm, patient smile that reminded him of Mother and beckoned him over with one dainty hand.

"How did you do that?"

"Magic," the older boy replied, as if was the most natural answer in the world.

"Oh."

Until today, Mother had always told him that magic wasn't real. Then again, she'd also told him that monsters weren't real, and that he'd get sucked down the drain if he stayed in the bath too long after she told him to get out. As he considered the frozen figures clustered in front of him, Haku was forced to admit that Mother might have been wrong about some things, magic clearly being one of them.

He would have to ask her about it when he got home.

"I'm lost," Haku admitted finally. "Can you help me get back home?"

The stranger's smile drooped a little. "I'm afraid I can't," he said. "I'm trying to find my way back home myself, you see. But I can help you find someone who can."

Ten minutes ago, Haku had been prepared to accept any help he could get, but now he was skeptical. Things were certainly not what they seemed in this place, and just because the stranger seemed nice didn't mean he could be trusted.

There was a series of ominous popping and cracking sounds from the ice behind him. Haku looked over his shoulder and was met with the stares of all three of the faceless women, who had turned their heads within their icy prisons to watch him. He yelped and ran to hide behind the stranger.

"You're not going to try to eat me, are you?"

The boy laughed, a restrained but genuine chuckle that set Haku surprisingly at ease. "No," he said. "I'm not going to try to eat you." He started back down the street, towards the main road. The boy, too, seemed to glide over the stone path, though this more a measure of balance and grace than any supernatural propulsion. Haku hung back a moment to make sure his legs were moving anyway, just in case.

The main road was bustling by the time they returned. It had felt like only a few minutes to explore the winding side street, but now the hot stone path was shaded by countless towering bodies. He tried his best not to look at them; some of the people looked almost human, but others seemed too tall, to wide, too _sharp._ Others didn't look human at all.

The youth somehow managed to fit right in with the mismatched crowd. He walked with his head high, never pausing to make eye contact with those he passed and never looking away when they stopped to inspect him.

"Stay close to me," he said, "and don't stare. If you get too far away from me, they'll notice you."

Haku nodded and clung to the trailing back of the white robe. His raw feet had started to bleed at some point, and each step stung against the rough stone. He tried to ignore them. They walked in silence for a while, Haku struggling to keep up without getting blood on the pristine fabric.

Not far from the bridge that led to the building across the water, they stopped, and the stranger pulled Haku into the shadows of another side street. He crouched down to speak in a voice barely above a whisper. "Do you see that building over there?"

"You mean the palace?"

"It's a bath house," the boy corrected patiently. In the shadows, his shimmering kimono seemed dull and grey, and his glossy black hair no longer caught the light. "There's someone inside you must find, someone who can help you, but I cannot come with you. Your mother should have given you a note…?"

Silence.

Haku felt his cheeks flush. "I lost it," he admitted.

"Lost it," the boy repeated, in a voice that was skeptical but not unkind. "Nonsense." He studied Haku carefully, his dainty eyebrows furrowed in thought. "Have you checked your pockets?"

Haku had been walking with his hands in his pockets for the better part of the morning, but he checked just in case. His hand clasped the folded, crumpled paper, still warm around the edges. The boy smiled and looked relieved.

"There, you see? Now," he lowered his voice again, "listen carefully to me, Haku. Don't speak to anyone until you've found him, alright? Spirits will try to trick you, but you can't let them, or you'll never go home."

Haku stared at the crumpled paper in his open palm, disappointed but not altogether surprised that it hadn't taken him back home on its own. "I don't understand," he said. "I can't read this. Who am I supposed to speak to? How do I find him?"

"His name is Zabuza," said the boy, "although he may not remember it. I only know that he is somewhere inside—I cannot set foot in that building. If you hold onto that note, though, your mother's magic should take you to him."

"What if I can't find him?" Haku asked.

The boy's smile fell at the corners, and his warm expression turned melancholy and distant. "If you want to go home, you must."

It seemed like no one noticed the older boy as they rejoined the crowd, or if they did, no one acknowledged him. He wove patiently through a sea of bodies, swift but unhurried. Haku trailed after him, leaving a string of uneven and slightly bloody footprints on the road. No one seemed to notice those either.

He was grateful to trade the rough stone for the cool, smooth touch of lacquered wood as they reached the bridge, though he still winced with each step. It was even more crowded here than on the main road. The other side of the bridge was obscured by the flow of moving bodies.

They clung to one side, moving in roughly the same direction as the rest of the crowd. He had found some courage now, with the older boy walking ahead of him, and his eyes wandered. It was hard not to stare—each passerby was wildy different than the last, and they transfixed him with colorful shapes and wild exaggerations.

The pair passed a huge creature roughly the same shape as a ferret, but it burned a brilliant black that hurt his eyes to look at. The heat radiating from its body pushed him closer to the older boy. Silently, Haku chided himself for getting so far away from his protector in the first place.

Faint stains had begun to creep up the pristine white robe, blooming like macabre snowflakes in shades of grey-green. He pulled his hands away and inspected them, convinced he had somehow ruined the garment by clinging too tightly, but they seemed clean.

Distracted by his hands and the crystalline stains, Haku ran headlong into another member of the crowd. She was tall, like the women they'd left in the alley, and her hair fell in flat, stringy bundles around her face, which was twisted into an expression of perpetual despair. She reached out for him with long, pale fingers, and suddenly he was reminded of how tired he felt. Though the sun was still bright overhead, his body knew it was way past his bedtime.

His eyes drooped, but as the woman's face swooped down closer to him, fear won out. He yelped and retreated behind the boy, whose name he still didn't know. The youth put one comforting hand on Haku's shoulder.

"My apologies, mother," he said to the woman. She turned her head to him, tilted it slightly to one side. "I wasn't watching where I was going. I'm in something of a hurry. I hope I did not offend."

The woman wailed, a piercing sound that made Haku cover his ears and cry out in pain, but she pushed past them towards the other side of the bridge. The heavy feeling behind his eyes dissipated, and he felt awake and alert again—at least, as much as he had before.

"You didn't have to apologize for me," he said. "I was the one who—"

He stopped short. There was blood tricking down one side of the boy's mouth, thick and clotted and dark.

"A-are you okay?" Haku asked. "You're bleeding."

"I'm fine," said the boy, but the more of the thick black liquid spilled from his mouth as he spoke. He didn't seem to notice. "Come on," he prompted. "We should keep moving."

Haku trailed further back after that, and kept his eyes fixed on the older boy, who clearly was not what he seemed. He noticed, too, other changes in the boy's appearance; his rich, dark eyes turned vacant and glassy, and his porcelain skin now seemed sunken and sallow.

The blossoming stains in his clothing darkened as they passed the bridge's halfway point, turning a dark, dirty red beneath his dull, matted hair. Haku bristled. _That_ wasn't his fault. He resisted the urge to hang back even further.

"Are you a ghost?" he asked, eyeing the other side of the bridge as it came into view. How fast could he run on bloody, blistered feet?

"Don't be silly," said the boy. "Ghosts aren't real."

They stopped at the very edge of the bridge, the edge of the youth's high sandals only just this-side of the brick-and-mortar walkway. "This is as far as I can go," said the boy, his soft voice heavy and wet and hollow. Haku didn't look at him when he put a skeletal hand on his shoulder, kept his eyes closed when he crouched down to speak to him.

"Remember what I told you?"

Haku swallowed hard and forced himself to look. For that fleeting instant, the boy was beautiful again, full and soft and _alive_. He wasn't sure if that was comforting or not. "Don't talk to anyone until I've found Zabuza," he repeated. "The spirits will try to trick me, but I can't let them."

His voice trembled and his heart raced, but the older boy smiled. "That's a good boy," he said, nudging him forward. "You'll be alright."

But Haku couldn't make himself move. He studied his dirty feet even as the youth stood, tracing the grain in the wood with one toe to take the weight off. "Why can't you come with me? What if I can't find him on my own? Or what if something gets me, or—"

"Don't worry so much, Haku. In the spirit world, things tend to turn up where they belong—and that goes for people too."

Haku furrowed his eyebrows and looked up. He had questions, like how the boy had known his name or what his cryptic statement had meant, but all he managed was a voiceless scream. He leveled his eyes with the stranger's chest and what he saw there sent him running towards the bathhouse: a hole, big enough to fit a human hand through, that went all the way to the other side of the boy's body. It dribbled more thick, black liquid.

He did not stop to look up at the boy's face.

When he stopped short of the open gate to look over his shoulder, the boy had vanished.

"Hey!" someone shouted, "You aren't supposed to be here!"

He didn't stick around to see if the owner of the voice would follow him. He just ran as fast as he could, Mother's note crumpled in his hand. He squeezed through the wooden side gate before the almost-human figures on either side could slam it closed in front of him. Haku didn't care where he was or where he was going. He would worry about that when he found somewhere safe to hide.

He nearly tripped as he rounded a corner, pushing himself up from the fall with both hands. Around another corner. Up a set of squat stone steps, two at a time. He ran and ran until he found an open door and ducked inside to rest. There would be more places to hide inside the building. He could slow down. He could _breathe._

Haku rested his hands on his knees and tried to hold in a cough. His chest felt like it might explode, but on the plus side, he could no longer feel the stinging pain from the bottoms of his feet. A single cough escaped him. He looked up, to see if anyone was around to hear.

Grey slitted eyes stared back at him from a pale, too-long face. The man wore pretty silver earrings. He also had razor sharp teeth. Haku noticed little else about him.

"H-hey!" sputtered the stranger, reaching for him with spidery fingers.

This time, he didn't even try to scream. He took off past the creature, his feet slipping on the smooth hardwood floor. He could hear the sounds of chase behind him along with muffled swearing, and forced himself to run faster and faster until they began to fade.

He ran past open doors and squat women who shrieked as he flew past them. He ran down hallways he prayed were not dead ends and nearly bumped into something that looked more like a mannequin than a living person.

Finally, he rounded a corner into a dark, narrow hallway lined with paper screens. It was empty here, and quiet, and the sounds of people behind him had long since faded away. Haku sank to the floor, coughing as quietly as he could manage. His legs trembled. His mind was blank, just a blurry rush of scenery he was too tired and too hungry to process.

A couple of minutes passed like this, until each shaking breath no longer felt like it would collapse his lungs. He had spent all morning looking for someone to help him, but now he had never felt more grateful to be alone.

The murmur of voices crept back down the hall behind him. Haku scrambled to his feet. He'd hoped to have a little more time to rest, but his knees buckled with every step. If he didn't find somewhere to hide before someone caught up with him, there was little chance of getting away again.

The narrow corridor left him limited options. He could go back the way he came—towards the sound of the voices, towards the razor-mouthed man who had chased him this far—or he could try his luck with the slate-grey door at the shadowy end of the hallway.

Haku thought about the too-long face, the spidery fingers, the creatures he had encountered so far, and opted for the door.

It opened to a claustrophobic stairwell, lit only by a few sparse, bare lightbulbs. Flakes of cracked paint hung down from the sagging ceiling with little more than cobwebs to anchor them. At the bottom, darkness. He stood at the top of the stairs, stale, humid air crowding his lungs, and reconsidered his choice.

But the voices behind him echoed louder off the bare walls and spurred him onwards. He closed the door behind him as quietly as he could and considered his situation.

The stairwell was clearly in disrepair, which might have meant it was out of use. If all else failed, he could hide out here until the sounds of the bathhouse above died down. From there, he wasn't sure what he would do.

The boy on the bridge had told him to find somebody called Zabuza. Haku remembered that name from his uncle's stories, but the recognition gave him no relief; in the stories, Zabuza's caprice was matched only by his cruelty, and he was known to have a habit of eating the unworthy. If he existed at all, he couldn't be trusted.

Haku crept down the stairs into the stifling darkness, which only got warmer the further down he went. There was a door at the bottom, he noticed as his eyes adjusted, and a thick cloud of steam rolling out of the crack underneath.

Against his better judgement, he raised one trembling hand and knocked three times. The sound was quiet, hollow, but its echo managed to fill the entire stairwell. It reverberated off the walls. There was a sound from inside, like metal being dragged across stone, but the door did not open.

He tried again.

This time, the door flew open before the second knock, creating a rush of air that sucked the steam back with it. The clouds settled, then rolled out again, engulfing him in dim, hot light that glowed orange and ominous from a nearby grate.

" _What?"_ growled a terrible voice from within.

Haku opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

The dull scraping sound came closer, louder, moving towards him steadily with an awkward, uneven rhythm. His legs trembled. He wanted to run, but his knees threatened to buckle at even the thought. And where would he go? Not back up the stairs, to whoever was searching for him in the long, narrow hall.

So he stood, frozen, as the hulking shape of a man who must have been twice his size came into view. He was bare-skinned from the waist up, and far too thin for his broad frame. Even from far away, Haku could count the giant's ribs.

The man's odd limp brought him to a halt at the door where he lingered, squinting into the darkness above Haku's head. Then he looked down, and his gaunt face twisted scrunched into a frown.

"Shit," hissed the giant, with a flash of razor sharp teeth.


End file.
